Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not unique among movies made from multi-part episodes of a TV series. However it is a rare one that got a theatrical release rather than a TV airing or a direct-to-video release. Which is actually my problem with this movie. It doesn't feel like a movie. It just feels like a 98 minute episode of the animated series that followed it.
George Lucas loves Animation. Since before he made the original Star Wars movie in 1977, he'd wanted to be in the Animation department of a studio. In fact, if memory serves me right he had actually applied for the Animation department at Warner Bros. before that got shut down. Which explains why he was so heavily involved in the production of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, both the movie and the TV show. Naturally, George would want to make a Star Wars animated movie to promote the upcoming series. Which is basically what this movie is. A promotion for the TV show that debuted two months after the movie came out in theatres.
Story wise, this movie is actually a better pilot for a TV show than it is as a movie. That's not a bad thing considering this movie was an afterthought that George had after he saw footage from the show on the big screen at Skywalker Ranch. However, it was a strange decision to put it in theatres since it didn't do very well at the box office. But I don't think it was going to do very well because The Dark Knight and Iron Man were big that year and I don't think any movie could really stand up to them. Not to mention it doesn't stand up against the first six live action Star Wars movies either.
Personally, I enjoyed this movie. But I enjoyed it as a feature length pilot episode rather than a TV series. I actually went to see this movie in theatres. It was the summer of 2008 and I was still on summer holidays from college. Brad and I went a week or so after it came out and we had fun. I don't remember seeing any commercials for it on TV or on YouTube at the time (very early YouTube) but I knew that the movie was coming out because of Star Wars Insider, the official Star Wars magazine, which is still in publication today. I think Brad and I had also seen the movie poster in the lobby of the theatre when we went to see The Dark Knight. I also knew that the TV show was coming out and that it would be airing on CTV so I remember being super excited. I'll get more into that when I do my season 1 review.
My favourite thing about this movie is the dynamic between Anakin and his new Padawan, Ahsoka Tano. They play off each other in a way that the authors of the books chronicling the adventures of Obi-Wan and Anakin between Episode I and Episode II didn't get quite right. I laughed at their back and forth banter and I loved how Ahsoka integrated herself into the Clone Trooper company that Anakin commands. Most of the awkwardness comes from the fact that Anakin doesn't think he's prepared to take on a Padawan of his own, despite both Yoda and Obi-Wan assuring him that he is. Which is a far cry from where Anakin is in the Prequel Trilogy, especially in Revenge of the Sith. I think it works though because there are only a handful of novels and comics that came out prior to this movie and show which showed us the Clone Wars since the prequels only showed us the beginning and the end of it, with nothing in between being shown. And with those novels and comics being considered Legends now, all we have are this movie and the show that it started.
Dooku's plot is kind of dumb. Well okay, maybe dumb isn't the right word for it, but it felt kind of pointless since Palpatine was planning to discredit the Jedi on a larger scale once the Clone Wars were over, so to discredit and villify them on such a smaller scale, especially when Sidious expected it to fail is kind of a waste. Especially since the Jedi figured the plan out fairly quickly. The plan made tactical sense, since the Separatists need to control the movement of ships through Jabba's territory in order to defeat the Republic, it's just their execution was poor.
I think the worst part of this movie is that they introduced Jabba's uncle, Ziro the Hutt, way too late in the film and that was pretty unnecessary. I get needing someone on the inside, but Dooku or Ventress could just as easily have bribed a member of Jabba's court to get Jabba's son out of the palace on Tatooine. Also, I know this movie and it's resulting TV series are canon, but back in 2008 there was no way they knew that Disney was going to be buying Lucasfilm and Star Wars, and ending the original Expanded Universe, but where's Jabba's uncle, Jiliac the Hutt from the Han Solo Trilogy? In Legends, particularly in the pre-Prequel era novels, and possibly comics, Jabba is still fairly young for a Hutt when Han and Chewie start working for him. As a result Jiliac was the one in charge of the Hutt Family, with Jabba assisting him. I looked Jiliac up on Wookieepedia and he/she only appeared in the Han Solo Trilogy and was mentioned in the Legends novel, Shadow Games, which I have not read as it came out in 2011 and I don't remember reading about it in Star Wars Insider. I guess George Lucas and Dave Filoni chose not to incorporate Jiliac into the movie or the series and Jiliac will forever be in Legends.
Anyway, like I said, I think they introduced Ziro way too late in the movie. I checked while watching the movie last night, and there was ten minutes left in the movie when Ziro was introduced. It would've worked fine if this had been a TV episode rather than a movie, because Ziro does appear later on in the series, but for the movie, it feels shoehorned in.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I really enjoyed Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It's a great introduction into the world of the TV show, but as a movie it's lacking in comparison to the live action Star Wars movies. If I'm being honest though, you could actually skip this movie and go right into watching the show. I remember when the first episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars aired back in 2008, I'd seen the movie two months earlier, and even though I'd seen it, I didn't feel watching the movie was necessary to enjoy the show. Especially because the first episode focuses on Yoda and a group of Clone Troopers and none of the other characters appear in the episode (Editor's Note: I'm going to feel pretty stupid if I watch the episode and discover that Ahsoka and Anakin show up, but I haven't seen the episode in 12 years so I don't remember it all that well). I'm giving Star Wars: The Clone Wars 7/10 stars. The story and animation are pretty good, but throwing Ziro in at the last minute and Dooku's plan in general feels pointless.
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